1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the art of refrigerator cabinets wherein access to an interior of the cabinet is provided by opening a pivotally mounted refrigerator door and, more particularly, to an upper hinge assembly, used to mount the door for pivotal movement, which enables the door to be reinstalled in a precise factory set position following post-manufacturing detachment from the cabinet.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
In the art of refrigerators, it is customary to enable access to a refrigerated compartment defined within a cabinet by pivotally mounting a respective door for movement between opened and closed positions. Regardless of the particular door configuration of the refrigerator, there is invariably provided at least one upper hinge for rotatably supporting a compartment door to the cabinet. In a typical refrigerator cabinet arrangement, an upper hinge is provided that includes a first portion fixed to a top wall or panel of the cabinet, such as through the use of various threaded fasteners, and a second, hinge axis defining portion which establishes a pivot axis for the door.
When a refrigerator cabinet of this type is initially assembled at a factory, extreme care is taken to assure the precise mounting location for the upper hinge. More specifically, both upper and lower hinges for the door must be properly positioned in order to assure that a gasket provided about a peripheral portion of the door will establish a proper seal with the cabinet upon closing the door. Any misalignment can result in that seal being broken, thereby resulting in a considerable loss of refrigeration and overall product efficiency.
Unfortunately, although a refrigerator door may be properly mounted relative to the cabinet at the factory, various occurrences can actually alter the particular mounting, thereby creating a misalignment between the door and the cabinet. For instance, care must be taken during loading, unloading, and shipping of the refrigerator to avoid the development of misalignment problems. In general, these concerns are considered to have been adequately addressed with appropriate packaging and handling techniques. However, it is sometimes necessary for service personnel to remove a door of a refrigerator. In addition, the installation of a refrigerator may require the door to be detached from the cabinet in order to enable the overall refrigerator to clear predefined doorways. Under at least these circumstances, it is necessary to remove one or more of the hinges. Typically, the upper hinge is disconnected from the cabinet. In any case, whenever the upper hinge is removed, it is near impossible to re-establish the original mounting with precision. Therefore, some misalignment is almost invariably created when reinstalling the door relative to the cabinet.
With this in mind, there have been attempts to address these concerns. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,992,028 discloses an arrangement for positively aligning a door on a refrigerator cabinet wherein one or more alignment projections are fixed to a top surface of the cabinet, either directly or through the use of a plate. An upper hinge for the door is initially orientated relative to the cabinet by having each projection extend through a respective hole formed in the upper hinge. Screws are then employed, at positions spaced from each projection, to secure the upper hinge to the top surface of the cabinet. If the door needs to be removed, the upper hinge can be detached from the cabinet. However, the projection structure remains fixed to the top surface of the cabinet, thereby enabling the upper hinge to be reinstalled in the factory set position.
Although this patented arrangement describes an upper hinge mounting assembly which addresses certain concerns of the present invention, there still exists a need in the art of refrigerators for an upper hinge assembly which enables a door of a refrigerator cabinet to be efficiently and effectively detached and reattached, while assuring that a factory preset mounting relationship between the door and cabinet can be precisely re-established in order to maintain a proper seal. Moreover, there exists a need for an upper hinge assembly which can perform this function while being simply in construction, economically feasible to implement, and effective over a long period of time.